Computer Graphics Unit 2

Unit 2 Graphics Hardware

Structure:
2.1 Introduction
Objectives
2.2 Graphics Workstation
2.3 Raster Display System with Peripheral Display Processor
2.4 The Video Controller
2.5 Color and Grayscale Levels
2.6 Color Tables
2.7 Grayscale
2.8 Video Mixing
2.9 Random Scan Display Processor
2.10 Summary
2.11 Terminal Questions

2.1 Introduction
This unit begins with the graphics workstation. It then covers the raster scan
display system with display processor and random scan display system with
display processor. It also describes the role of Video controller, Color and
grayscale levels, color look-up table and video controller in image display
and image mixing.

Objectives
At the end of this unit the student should be able to:
 Understand the Graphics workstation
 Understand the Raster Display System with Peripheral Display
Processor
 Understand the Video Controller , Colors, Grayscale Levels.
 Understand the Video Mixing, Random Scan Display Processor etc.

2.2 Graphics Workstation

Graphics Workstation is the Graphics Kernel System’s (GKS) term for a
graphical device that can display graphical output or accept graphical input
or both.

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The fig 2.2 shows the block diagram of typical graphics station. It consists of
CPU, display processor, memory, display devices, recorder, plotter, joystick,
keyboard, light pen mouse, scanner etc, the main hardware components of
a graphics workstation are CPU and Display Processor. The display
processor is also called a graphics controller or a display coprocessor. It
makes CPU free from the graphical chores. In addition to the system
memory, a separate display processor memory area is provided in graphics
workstations. Graphics workstations have a provision to interface video
cameras and television set. The size of the display device, colors supported
by it, whether it is a raster or line drawing device are the main properties of
the graphics workstation. The graphics workstation is always supported with
graphics software. Graphics software acts as a very powerful tool to create
scenes, images, pictures and also animated pictures.

Fig. 2.2: block diagram of typical workstation

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2.3 Raster Display System with Peripheral Display Processor

In some graphics systems a separate processor is used to interpret the
commands in the display file. Such a processor is known as display
processor. Display processor access the display information, processes it
once during every refresh cycle.
In the raster scan display systems, the purpose of display processor is to
free the CPU from the graphics routine task. Here, the display processor is
provided with separate memory area as shown in the fig 2.3. The main task
of the display processor is to digitize a picture definition given in an
application program into a set of pixel-intensity values for storage in the
frame buffer. This digitization process is known as scan conversion.

Fig. 2.3: Raster scan system with a display processor

Display processors are also designed to perform a number of additional

operations these operations include:
 Generating various line styles( dashed, dotted or solid)
 Display color areas
 Performing certain transformations
 Manipulations on displayed objects.

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2.4 The Video Controller

We know that the video controller receives the intensity information of each
pixel from frame buffer and display them on the screen. Let us see the
internal organization of a video controller.

The fig 2.4 shows the internal organization of a video controller. It consists
of raster-scan generator, x and y address registers and pixel value register.
The raster-scan generator produces deflection signals that generate the
raster scan. The raster scan generator also controls the x and y address
registers which in turn define the memory location to be accessed next.
Frarne buffer locations, and the corresponding screen positions, are
referenced in Cartesian coordinates. For many graphics monitors, the
coordinate origin is defined at the lower left screen corner. The screen
surface is then represented as the first quadrant of a two-dimensional
system, with positive x values increasing to the right and positive y values
increasing from bottom to top. (On some personal computers, the
coordinate origin is referenced at the upper left comer of the screen, so the
y values are inverted.) Scan lines are then labeled from y, at the top of the
screen to 0 at the bottom. Along each scan line, screen pixel positions are
labeled from 0 to xmax. During each fetch the pixel value is read and is used
to control the intensity of the CRT beam.

Fig. 2.4: Simple organization of Video Controller

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2.5 Color and Grayscale Levels

Various color and intensity-level options can be made available to a user,
depending on the capabilities and design objectives of a particular system.
General purpose raster-scan systems, for example, usually provide a wide
range of colors, while random-scan monitors typically offer only a few color
choices, if any. Color options are numerically coded with values ranging
from 0 through the positive integers. For CRT monitors, these color codes
are then converted to intensity level settings for the electron beams.
In a color raster system, the number of color choices available depends on
the amount of storage provided per pixel in the frame buffer. Also, color-
information can be stored in the frame buffer in two ways: We can store
color codes directly in the frame buffer, or we can put the color codes in a
separate table and use pixel values as an index into this table. With the
direct storage scheme, whenever a particular color code is specified in an
application program, the corresponding binary value is placed in the frame
buffer for each-component pixel in the output primitives to be displayed in
that color. A minimum number of colors can be provided in this scheme with
3 bits of storage per pixel, as shown in the table 2.5.

Each of the three bit positions is used to control the intensity level (either on
or off) of the corresponding electron gun in an RGB monitor. The leftmost bit
controls the red gun, the middle bit controls the green gun, and the
rightmost bit controls the blue gun. Adding more bits per pixel to the frame
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buffer increases the number of color choices. With 6 bits per pixel, 2 bits can
be used for each gun. This allows four different intensity settings for each of
the three color guns, and a total of 64 color values are available for each
screen pixel. With a resolution of 1024 by 1024, a full-color (24bit per pixel)
RGB system needs 3 megabytes of storage for the frame buffer. Color
tables are an alternate means for providing extended color capabilities to a
user without requiring large frame buffers. Lower cost personal computer
systems, in particular, often use color tables to reduce frame-buffer storage
requirements.

2.6 Color tables

In color displays, 24- bits per pixel are commonly used, where 8-bits
represent 256 levels for each color. Here it is necessary to read 24-bits for
each pixel from frame buffer. This is very time consuming. To avoid this
video controller uses look up table (LUT) to store many entries of pixel
values in RGB format. With this facility, now it is necessary only to read
index to the look up table from the frame buffer for each pixel. This index
specifies the one of the entries in the look-up table. The specified entry in
the loop up table is then used to control the intensity or color of the CRT.
Usually, look-up table has 256 entries. Therefore, the index to the look-up
table has 8-bits and hence for each pixel, the frame buffer has to store 8-bits
per pixel instead of 24 bits. Fig. 2.6 shows the organization of a color
(Video) look-up table.

Fig. 2.6: Organization of a Video look-up table

There are several advantages in storing color codes in a lookup table. Use
of a color table can provide a "reasonable" number of simultaneous colors
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without requiring Iarge frame buffers. For most applications, 256 or 512
different colors are sufficient for a single picture. Also, table entries can be
changed at any time, allowing a user to be able to experiment easily with
different color combinations in a design, scene, or graph without changing
the attribute settings for the graphics data structure. In visualization and
image-processing applications, color tables are convenient means for
setting color thresholds so that all pixel values above or below a specified
threshold can be set to the same color. For these reasons, some systems
provide both capabilities for color-code storage, so that a user can elect
either to use color tables or to store color codes directly in the frame buffer.

2.7 Grayscale
With monitors that have no color capability, color functions can be used in
an application program to set the shades of gray, or grayscale, for displayed
primitives. Numeric values over the range from 0 to 1 can be used to specify
grayscale levels, which are then converted to appropriate binary codes for
storage in the raster. This allows the intensity settings to be easily adapted
to systems with differing grayscale capabilities.

Table 2.7

Table 2.7 lists the specifications for intensity codes for a four-level grayscale
system. In this example, any intensity input value near 0.33 would be stored
as the binary value 01 in the frame buffer, and pixels with this value would
be displayed as dark gray. If additional bits per pixel are available in the
frame buffer, the value of 0.33 would be mapped to the nearest level. With
3 bits per pixel, we can accommodate 8 gray levels; while 8 bits per pixel
would give us 256 shades of gray. An alternative scheme for storing the

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intensity information is to convert each intensity code directly to the voltage

value that produces this grayscale level on the output device in use.

2.8 Video Mixing

Video controller provides the facility of video mixing. In which it accepts
information of two images simultaneously. One from frame buffer and other
from television camera, recorder or other source. This is illustrated in fig 2.7.
The video controller merges the two received images to form a composite
image.

Fig. 2.8: Video mixing

There are two types of video mixing. In first, a graphics image is set into a
video image. Here mixing is accomplished with hardware that treats a
designated pixel value in the frame buffer as a flag to indicate that the video
signal should be shown instead of the signal from the frame buffer, normally
the designated pixel value corresponds to the background color of the frame
buffer image.
In the second type of mixing, the video image is placed on the top of the
frame buffer image. Here, whenever background color of video image
appears, the frame buffer is shown, otherwise the video image is shown.

2.9 Random Scan Display Processor

The fig 2.8 shows the architecture of a random scan display system with
display processor. This architecture is similar to the display processor based
raster system architecture except the frame buffer. In random scan display
no local memory is provided for scan conversion algorithms, since that
functionality is typically implemented using PLAs (Programmable Logical
Arrays) or microcode.

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Fig. 2.9: Random Scan Display System

In random scan displays, the display processor has its own instruction set
and instruction address register. Hence it is also called Display Processing
Unit ( DPU) or Graphics Controller. It performs instruction fetch, decode
and execute cycles found in any computer. To provide a flicker free display,
the display processor has to execute its program 30 to 60 times per second.
The program executed by the display processor and the graphics package
reside in the main memory. The main memory is shared by the general CPU
and the display processor.

2.10 Summary
Graphics workstation is the graphics kernel systems (GKS) for graphics
devices that can display graphical output or accept graphical input or both.
Raster Display System with Peripheral Display Processor in some graphics
systems a separate processor is used to interpret the commands in the
display file. Such a processor is known as display processor. Display
processor access the display information, processes it once during every
refresh cycle. The video controller receives the intensity information of each
pixel from frame buffer and display on the screen. Various color and
intensity-level options can be made available to a user, depending on the
capabilities and design objectives of a particular system. Video controller
provides the facility of video mixing.

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2.11 Terminal Questions

1. Draw and explain the block diagram of typical workstation.
2. Explain the raster scan display system.
3. What is frame buffer?
4. Writer short notes on video controller.
5. Explain the use of video lookup table.
6. Writer short notes on video mixing.
7. Explain random scan display system.

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